Thursday, September 07, 2006

Quite ironic how Bush compared al Qaeda to Nazis. Read on. A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferencz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime," the 87-year-old Ferencz told OneWorld from his home in New York. He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.

Ferencz said that after Nuremberg the international community realized that every war results in violations by both sides, meaning the primary objective should be preventing any war from occurring in the first place.

He said the atrocities of the Iraq war--from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of dozens of civilians by U.S. forces in Haditha to the high number of civilian casualties caused by insurgent car bombs--were highly predictable at the start of the war.

An annual transatlantic survey released Wednesday by Transatlantic Trends had some interesting results. For the first time in its five-year history — shows more Americans disapproving (58%) than approving (40%) of President Bush’s handling of international affairs. That brings the U.S. much closer to reaching the Europeans levels of disapproving (77%) than approving (37%) of President Bush’s handling of international affairs.

In an article via FOX News, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says it's time for the United States to "get tough" with Iran's Islamic theocracy. Speaking before a conservative public policy group Wednesday, Gingrich said Americans should take Iranian leaders'threats seriously, before they acquire nuclear weapons.

However, the threat of a military attack against Iran not only undermines negotiations but also undermines the international regime of nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear inspections, which is based on multilateral cooperation, not unilateral force. Iran is at least a 5-8 years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, were it to attempt to do so. There is no crisis justifying the threat of military force against Iran.

Gingrich also said the United States is paying for former President Clinton's foreign policies, which he said gave Americans"eight years of appeasing the world and provided an opportunity for Osama bin Laden to bomb two U.S. embassies and the USS Cole."

Mr. Gingrich fails to realize that Clinton didn't call other world leaders names or attempt to scare the American public into making irrational decisions. That's one of the main reasons we had peace during the Clinton Administration.